Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 7271602" data-attributes="member: 6777454">I am just going to jump in here and point out....Historically, on the actual battlefield... swords SUCKED. Using a sword of any sort was an undesirable situation. So what is with this drive to make all swords into GOD weapons?!!The fact that they are even functional in D&D is due to the clumsy hit point system. In proper combat, a single arrow is pretty certain to maim, if not kill, anyone it hits and remove them from combat. So obviously the ideal way to deal with your opponent would be a bow or a crossbow. And the invention of firearms just made it so that much less skilled people could fire them and they would get through armor better. Especially if you could fire it from behind some spiked barricades or from horseback, you would easily defeat any person with any sort of sword. Granted, ranged weapons take some time before you can make your attack, but if they need to run at you to use their weapon, you likely have time to load up and shoot them dead. The issue is when you are facing waves of enemies-- you can only shoot down the front line.And if they got closer, then the next weapon you would want to use is a polearm. One good stab to their chest or slash across their belly or to their legs and your swordsman is just finished. The polearm just guarantees you at least the first attack, if not every subsequent attack until the last if you are generally skilled enough to keep them at bay with the pole. Its not something they can "get by". There is a reason 300 spearmen could kill 10,000 swordsman in a mountain pass, it wasn't just the warriors were so good-- having a polearm and shield is just that much better than relying on a sword.The only good things about swords is that they don't take up much room, so you can carry them around on your person with ease. There is no good, easy, comfortable way to transport a halberd while going about your normal daily business. But a sword at your side doesn't impede you much. This means you can have them handy if you run into a fight on the city street or inside a castle or such.But no successful military tradition has ever relied primarily on spears as their sole weapon of choice. They are not some all powerful weapon that is so vastly superior to all others in every imaginable situation that it is unthinkable that anyone would ever choose to use anything else like the lot of you want to stat them up to be. They are a bottom tier weapon-- even axes and maces/hammers are more effective if you are facing armored opponents as swords. The only situation I can think of where a sword would be the ideal weapon is if you were running around cutting down unarmored people who weren't fighting back and instead were running away from you so you would have to run to catch up and attack quickly in order to cut down as many as possible.In any situation where you are facing a reasonably skilled person with a sword, it is because you have both made a gentlemanly agreement to use the worst of all weapons in your battle to somewhat minimize the impact of luck and chance and make it more about skill.But unless you are a marauder slicing up a village of fleeing peasants, the sword just isn't the weapon of choice or you are specifically dueling someone in some sort of organized contest with rules, swords are the worst of all weapons.As such-- I suggest all swords should have their die size reduced 1 size from their current stats to more accurately reflect their general worthlessness as proper weapons of war and proper status as easily transported weapons of last resort.</blockquote>

Verification